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Foglight for Databases pros and cons

Vendor: Quest Software

4.2 out of 5

14 reviews
93% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Foglight for Databases offers robust reporting and change tracking, efficiently managing multiple platforms without local installations. It includes SQL Performance Investigator and adaptive baselines for superior insights. However, two-year data can slow reporting for 20 SQL Servers, and non-critical alerts require manual tweaks. Stability issues arise beyond 150 Db2 servers, and report customization is complex. Monitoring Postgres should align with SQL Server standards, improving insights.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Foglight for Databases offers immense reporting capabilities and detailed data collection on SQL environments and changes.

The PI module assists in optimizing database performance by identifying impactful index modifications and drilling down into query contentions.

Foglight for Databases provides proactive monitoring through real-time activity screens and alerts, enabling preventive maintenance before issues escalate.

Cross-platform database support and centralized monitoring streamline database operations without the need for local installations.

SQL Performance Investigator and profiling tools are highly valuable, enabling detailed performance analysis and efficient root cause identification.

CONS

Reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive when holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers.

There is a need for better mechanisms for critical alerts without receiving unnecessary emails.

Stability issues arise when monitoring exceeds 150 to 160 Db2 servers.

Access to rule development code would reduce dependency on professional services for custom solutions.

Improvement is needed in monitoring Postgres to match SQL Server capabilities.

Foglight for Databases Pros review quotes

Senior Database Consultant at Novaccent

Oct 2, 2018

Its reporting capabilities are immense.

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KS

Sr. Database Administrator at a sports company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 29, 2020

The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact.

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AN

Anthony Nicoletti

Database Administrator, Information Technology at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 9, 2020

Foglight's Change Tracking capabilities are another huge feature. It is wonderful to be able to do that. People don't realize the amount of information that Foglight gathers from a given server or instance. It gets down to the version of SQL, the disk array, everything that's there. Any change that's made, any upgrade to SQL, shows up on the dashboard almost immediately. You don't know how much time you save just having a tool in your back pocket that does that for you.

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Foglight for Databases

Free Report: Foglight for Databases Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Foglight for Databases. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

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VE

Vinothsingh Elumalai

Lead Software Engineer at Lowe's Companies

Dec 20, 2020

We can visualize all the different types of DB servers that we are monitoring in a single pane of glass. It uses a 360-degree overview of the database, for each of those databases that we are monitoring. That includes what kind of resource utilization is happening and what kind of DB parameters are getting monitored, as well as the different types of DB parameters that are being offered for each database type.

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reviewer1515096

Senior Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 21, 2021

Foglight is also able to help the DBAs proactively fix problems before they become an issue. It provides them with real-time activity screens that help in this regard. The DBAs are able to go to these screens and look at what's happening in real time, and that buys them time. It helps them see problems ahead of time and find solutions to them.

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JW

Database Administrator at AmTrust Financial Services, Inc.

Mar 14, 2021

The real-time activity screens are also helpful... if there is something that is running slowly, we can eliminate the database as being an issue and perhaps look at the server, network activity, or something outside of the realm of the database as being the issue.

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Manager of Database Services at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 8, 2021

The ability to monitor multiple database platforms streamlines our database operations. The single pane of glass is what we were really after when we picked Foglight. We knew we wanted something that could monitor cross-platform because it does save a lot of time to use the same tool. The one thing that I like with Foglight is that we don't have to install anything locally, like agents, directly on the database servers. That was also a big seller because it simplifies things.

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reviewer2011635

Sales & Operations Planning Manager at a retailer with 201-500 employees

Nov 2, 2022

The alarms alert proactively if there are any potential or ongoing issues with the databases that we support. That means we can take preventive or corrective action before the issue becomes a big issue. And the SQL PI features enable us to drill down into performance issues in our databases so that we can improve performance, which is important.

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Senior Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Nov 11, 2022

One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level.

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OG

Osvaldo Gaete Cabezas

IT engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 16, 2024

The most valuable feature is the in-depth capability SQL Performance Investigator provides. It allows you to drill down to the smallest detail that occurs on our platform. It does a highly detailed and atomic follow-up of what one wants to look for in relation to time and our different instances.

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Foglight for Databases Cons review quotes

Senior Database Consultant at Novaccent

Oct 2, 2018

When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive.

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KS

Sr. Database Administrator at a sports company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 29, 2020

I get a lot of alerts that, while important, are not critical. Then I have to dig in and figure out how to turn alerts off, but not the logging. I want to be able to go back, once we get the other big issues out of the way, and start fine-tuning some of those other areas, but I don't necessarily want to receive an email for all of them.

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AN

Anthony Nicoletti

Database Administrator, Information Technology at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 9, 2020

One thing that I would like, and it's probably something that I could set up internally, is something other than a dashboard which I have to look at to know that a server is down. I'd like bells and whistles to go off... If I look at the dashboard I know there's a server down. But if I'm not looking at it, if I'm looking at some other problem, I want to know about it. You can do that, you can use SMSs and alerts to your phone, and I could set it up to handle that, but it would be nice if, out-of-the-box, Foglight did that.

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Foglight for Databases

Free Report: Foglight for Databases Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Foglight for Databases. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

879,889 professionals have used our research since 2012.

VE

Vinothsingh Elumalai

Lead Software Engineer at Lowe's Companies

Dec 20, 2020

The system is not that stable. We have been facing a lot of issues. We built a new store environment of Foglight, an environment for monitoring the Lowe's store servers, which are all Db2 servers. The objective is to monitor 800 Db2 servers in each Foglight instance. Up to 150 Db2 servers, the environment was working fine. The moment it crossed 150 or 160, we started having a lot of stability issues.

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reviewer1515096

Senior Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

Feb 21, 2021

I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around.

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JW

Database Administrator at AmTrust Financial Services, Inc.

Mar 14, 2021

When we decided to go with Foglight, a lot of people stopped using the diagnostics part because it was very intimidating... They still won't use it because they feel it's too intimidating. They will open something up and not know what to do. It's not very user-friendly. You have to click on a lot of stuff to find the information.

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Manager of Database Services at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 8, 2021

The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model.

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reviewer2011635

Sales & Operations Planning Manager at a retailer with 201-500 employees

Nov 2, 2022

The version that I'm using is not the latest version, so there might have been some improvement, but the OS monitoring is a bit lacking, and the high-availability option is a bit complicated to set up and it doesn't work all the time.

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Senior Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Nov 11, 2022

Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department.

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OG

Osvaldo Gaete Cabezas

IT engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 16, 2024

Quest must release a Spanish version. That's critical because not everyone speaks English in Latin America. It's an excellent product, so it's super important that they offer the application and customer service in Spanish.

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Show 3 more reviews (out of 13)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Database Development and Management

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Database Development and Management

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

VMware Tanzu Data Solutions vs Foglight for Databases

Oracle Enterprise Manager vs Foglight for Databases

IDERA ER/Studio vs Foglight for Databases

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Foglight for Databases

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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs Foglight for Databases

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